Vacuum cleaners are commonplace in households and places of work. Such devices are generally used to remove food, dirt and hair from a surface, such as a floor. A vacuum cleaner generally operates by sucking air through a suction opening in a maneuverable head which causes a decrease in pressure at the surface to be cleaned. Air is therefore drawn through or along the surface to be cleaned and into the suction opening carrying detritus such as food, dirt and hair. This detritus is transported into the vacuum cleaner for removal.
However, the surfaces within a single household or place of work may vary. Such surfaces include a hard floor, for example a solid wood floor or concrete, or a soft floor, for example a carpet. Food, dirt and hair may become trapped in the fibres of a soft floor, such as a carpet, or in the crevices of a hard floor, such as a wood floor. Therefore, different vacuum cleaner head arrangements are required to provide a good cleaning performance on different types of floor.
It is known to provide a vacuum cleaner with different attachments to clean different types of floor. However, this requires a user to stop vacuuming and replace the vacuum cleaner attachment for each type of floor.
Another possible approach is to provide a vacuum cleaner head with an adjustable unit, for example a brush, which may be selectively deployed. This allows a user to selectively deploy the adjustable unit to maximise the performance on two different types of surface. However, this still involves the user having to stop vacuuming to make the adjustment and lowers performance of the vacuum cleaner on different surfaces.
DE3444724 discloses a floor suction nozzle for a vacuum cleaner which has at least one working edge of flexible construction running parallel to the suction channel of the nozzle. In order to achieve the full effectiveness of rigid working edges despite the flexible construction of the working edge, provision is made for both working edges bounding the suction channel to consist of flexible tongues formed by vertical slots, which tongues are rigid in the vertical direction and resilient in the horizontal direction.